Monday, July 10, 2017

We...the Endangered Species

I
couldn’t sleep last night.Something I
witnessed on television, live and uncensored, made me horrified, concerned and
angry.But mostly it just made me sad.

Let’s
say you’re at home when suddenly there are lights, sirens and the sound of a
vehicle colliding with an immovable object outside.You open the door to find a van upside down
against a pole and a barefoot black man using a child as a shield between
himself and a white police officer as he tries to flee.The officer orders the man to stop, but the
subject continues to fling the toddler around, like a weapon.The officer is yelling, “That’s your
baby!Put the baby down!”His hand is not on his weapon, but reaching
to grab the man before the toddler goes airborne and gets injured.Finally freeing the child, the officer takes
the subject to the ground.The man thrashes
around yelling, “Help me!” repeatedly.As the struggle continues, a pair of legs comes into view.The officer, all alone, calls out, “I need
some help!” Would you:

(a)
Help the officer because it’s too much for one man to handle.

(b)
Ignore him because it’s the officer’s job and not your problem.

(c)
Wonder how the van flipped, as the engine continues running.

(d)
Whip out your cell phone to record the incident.

The
camera panned out to catch the moment that pair of legs came to the rescue. Instead we see a guy filming with his cell
phone. And laughing.

Whatever
happened to Good Samaritans? Remember
them?They do the right thing instead of
the easy thing.Have Good Samaritan
instincts become extinct in today’s society?

For
what seemed like an eternity, the pair struggled on the ground, the man
screeching for help, the officer yelling at him to stop resisting.The officer never reached for his weapon
while wrestling the man into a position to put him in handcuffs. In the background, you can hear a crowd urging
the subject to keep fighting.The
cameraman continued filming, mere feet away, as the man began reaching into his
back pocket.In the cacophony of sound
and struggle, the officer couldn’t see that.

Back
up arrives.The man is subdued without
gun play yet he continues to scream for help. With the man secured, the officer jumps up, asking
in a frantic tone, “Where’s the baby?Where’s the baby?”He shrugs off
questions about his own condition in his quest to find that child. The cameraman pans over to the crowd who’ve
been egging on the fight: half of them are standing there, filming with cell
phones.While they are of the same race
as the subject, none of them heeded his calls for help.They just filmed.A black officer approaches the crowd, which begins
to surge forward to get a better camera angle as the man is placed in a police
car, kicking and screaming the whole way.Arms outstretched, the officer firmly commands them to back up.Instead they taunt him, cursing and calling
him names.One even has the audacity to
demand his badge number.To the
officer’s credit, he calmly tells them that as soon as the situation is under
control, he will come back and answer all their questions.None of the “concerned citizens”, or the
father, ask about the toddler.

The
camera rotates toward the original officer, holding the little girl in his
arms, talking to her in a soft, soothing tone.Her arms are placed firmly around his neck and her head is on his
shoulder.It’s then I realize I’ve been
holding my breath.

I
watched this story unfold Saturday night on an unscripted t.v. show called Live PD.It follows officers in several states in real
time, offering the public a front row seat to see what officers see every
day.Some days are good.Some are bad.Whatever decision an officer makes, it’s viewed in real time.Live PD
follows two different departments in my state.The above incident took place a little over
an hour from where I live.We’ve watched
long enough to know the officers by name.And reputation.The responding
officer, Chris Mastrianni, is cool and level headed.He’s usually joined by Kevin Lawrence, who’s
known for calmly talking people back off an emotional ledge before they jump
into something they’ll regret.

The
phrase, “Judge not” echoed in my head when the incident was over. There’s a problem
with pulling out a cell phone to video without knowing the whole story.Yes, our perception is colored by our
experiences.Perhaps that crowd simply
saw a white cop struggling with a black suspect and they were waiting for shots
to be fired.What they didn’t know, but
viewers did, was that Mastrianni was enroute to a “shots fired” call at a
family gathering of over 200, which had turned into a fight.As
Mastrianni approached the scene, this van came flying out.He hit the blue lights.The van sped up.Cops have to rely on experience and instinct:
a vehicle leaving the scene at a high rate of speed where shots were reportedly
just fired is not on a leisurely evening drive. Speeds reached 90 mph. No one had any idea a child was in the
vehicle.I was once a Dispatcher for the SC Highway
Patrol; the risk of pursuit to stop someone is weighed against the possibility
of innocent bystanders getting hurt. I
didn’t get the words, “He’s going to wreck!” out of my mouth before the van flipped.

I
get queasy recalling that man crawl out of the van and position his child
between him and the officer. They’d just been in a wreck and Mastrianni’s fear
for that child’s safety was greater than her own father’s.As the duo wrestled on the ground, I’d later
learn about 95% of viewers were also yelling with me at the t.v., ”Mastrianni,
he’s reaching for his pocket!”Many viewers
were angry the cameraman didn’t intervene because he saw it too.Well, technically his job is to document, not
get involved. But one of his co-workers did.During the mayhem, the female producer could be seen in the distance, cradling
the toddler as the struggle ensued.Sometimes,
you have to forget potential legal repercussions and just do the right
thing.Thank you, Producer Lady, for
doing just that. Okay, I admit it.I did think the cameraman could’ve at least
given Mastrianni a verbal warning.If things
had gone horribly wrong, would the cameraman regret his decision to just film?

Life
is all about choices.Simply standing
by, egging on a fight and filming was a choice based on preconceived notions
and a lack of facts.Ironically that’s
often the very same argument angrily used when discussing injustice.Unless one of the crowd had been watching Live PD, they didn’t know about the
family fight, shots fired or the pre-wreck chase. Did that crowd hang around long enough to discover
the subject’s screaming wasn’t fear for his life, but to create chaos as he
took a bag of weed out of his back pocket and shoved it into his mouth? As the
crowd dispersed, no one probably saw the female deputy calmly ask where the
weed was as he forlornly spit it into her gloved hand.That means they missed Lawrence, the officer
taunted for doing his job, talking to the man calmly while counseling that his
behavior was making things worse.In
fact, at the man’s request, Lawrence insured another officer went down the
block to get the child’s grandmother, rather than let Social Services step in.The officer made two trips until he found
Grandma home. As they waited for an
ambulance to come check out father and child for any potential injuries,
Mastrianni was seen handing the toddler a stuffed bear.Officers carry stuff like that in their cars
to give children who are scared because the adults in their life made a bad
decision.Sadly while these “concerned
citizens” were documenting the chaos for whatever reason, did even one of them
focus on the child who endured a high speed chase, a wreck and being tossed
around like a rag doll by an adult intent on saving himself?.And as these worthless videos were being
downloaded to impress their friends, I’m guessing none of them witnessed the
wrecker flip the van upright.No
“documenters” were available to see the expression on Mastrianni’s face as he
searched for a child safety seat…and there was not one to be found.But he did find something.

On
the pavement, where the driver’s side door had rested, was a spent bullet
casing.

When
tough choices had to be made, Mastrianni’s focus was on an innocent child.Those whose focus was on a cellphone screen
chose to turn a blind eye to someone in need of help.No matter what their perception of who needed
the help, (father, child or cop) their choice was clear.They chose to do nothing.

We
need to stop pre-judging each other.Hands need to be extended in a display of mutual assistance, not merely
holding a cell phone in video mode.Choices have consequences.It’s
about time we start coming up with better consequences.Ones that benefit ALL of society.

This is a screen
capture of Mastrianni and the girl.

In
the background, a “concerned citizen” films the child’s father being placed in
a car.

3 comments:

I don't understand it at all! There is something happening in our country that almost defies explanation. You're right about the pre-judging, but there has to be more. I don't know what that is.

Yesterday, I saw the other side of humanity and I'm hoping that you've seen it, too. 80 people on a beach down in Florida, helped a family caught by a rip tide, by joining arms and making a human chain to save them! So people who didn't know each other, dropped their phones, joined hands and saved 10 people!

Ponita: I dreamed about this for two nights...it shook me to the core. I read an article today about Mastrianni that said everyone in the neighborhood he patrols respects him. That he goes out of his way to help those people, often aiding with food or finding someone a place to sleep. We need more Mastriannis and Lawrences.

Sav: I don't understand it either. What happened to the adults who helped show us how to make the world a better place, not more chaotic? But yes, I saw that story too yesterday and it made me feel better. Like perhaps most of us still have our humanity, whether someone is there to "record" it or not. Thank heaven for folks like my "blog family", who I can count on to let me commiserate and then come up with ways to make it better. Stubbornly I cling to the theory, "Be the change you want to see." :)